Dog Exercise

NOTE: I began this blog about 7 years ago when I first sustained my head injury, and I never finished it. I have a number of these in the queue, as you may notice if you read about Eco or D’fer who have since died.

I recently purchased a car. It is a smaller SUV and I really like it. I can put all my camping gear in it, and it is easy on gas and John and I can now each get to and from work without re-arranging our schedules to an overwhelming extent. I could have purchased a sports car, but it would not do what I needed it to do; take me camping. And I could have purchased a tractor, but it also would not do what I needed it to do; get me to and from work in a timely manner. I chose a car that would suit my needs. Dogs are a bit like cars in that different dogs have different traits.

A Ferrari would not be my first choice for ploughing a field or pulling something out of a ditch. If I wanted a vehicle that was highly responsive, very fast and pretty flashy, it would be a good choice.

I like fast, drivey, intense dogs. I also like my lawn tractor. You cannot treat a lawn tractor like a fast drivey dog, and you cannot treat a drivey dog like a lawn tractor. I meet a lot of people in my line of work who greatly admire my big, black, fast, responsive dog and who would like one just like him. Or they think they would like one just like him. The problem is that they want to drive this dog the way they would drive a tractor.

Drivey dogs, or dogs who are intensely passionate about doing things can be a lot of fun. They can be exciting to watch as they race through their routines, pushing towards their own excellence in whatever discipline they excel in. My dog excels at the protection phase of Schutzhund (sadly, I do not have the same skill or drive as he does or we would be competing!), and when the sleeve comes out a whole new gear sets in. One of my staff describes it as similar to driving a tractor from across the lawn, which is what prompted this blog.

When you work with Eco, he is always looking for the next cue, the next piece of information, the next job. He is almost one step ahead of me, and we have worked together for almost five years now. When someone who is new to him works with him, they really have to be on their toes, because if you work slowly and methodically with him, he quickly looses interest and goes off to do his own thing. Usually what he does under his own steam is to bark at the handler, bark at another dog, run around the room and search for Frisbees or Tugs or generally cause general mayhem. With an experienced handler, he is quick and responsive, engaged and lively and a whole lot of fun. Eco is a Ferrari when it comes to handling. Fast, responsive and likely to get you in trouble if you aren’t paying attention.

Not too long ago, I trained a service dog for a lady. This dog, a black lab, was a tractor of a dog. She likes working a lot. She is keen and willing, but not terrifically fast. She drove me a bit nuts because she doesn’t drive much like a sports car. She handles a lot more like a tractor. She does the job, promptly, efficiently and carefully, but she is not the least interested in speed or manoeuvrability. On the other hand, this dog is perfectly suited to the work that the lady needed her to do.

All too often I see people who are attracted to the Ferrari type of dog, but who are really better equipped to drive the tractor type of dog. So what happens? Much of the time, the Ferrari dog ends up being frustrated because his needs are not being met. And often the people are equally frustrated because the dog is doing much more than they expected he would do.

Everything about this Malinois says “I am on my toes and ready to go”. The Malinois is a Ferrari type of dog and that is why they are often used in sports like protection, agility and herding.

Consider a client I met with recently. They had seen a demo with a Malinois in it. The Malinois they met was a stable, easy going dog, or so they thought. They watched this dog do agility, protection, obedience, tracking and sheep herding. They heard about how this dog was trained to do other sports too such as Rally and treibball. They got to know the dog for about five minutes after a show, and they were smitten. They went right out and found a Malinois breeder who would sell them a dog and ship it across the country. By the time that I saw the family, they had a terrible mess on their hands!

Their Malinois was nothing like the one they had met at the show. Where the dog they met showed an extraordinary amount of self control, their dog seemed to be all over the map, snatching treats and toys any time he could and snapping at the heels of people passing on the side walk. The Malinois they met was relaxed and chill after his demo, lying on the floor at his owner’s feet, happily observing the world around him. In the two hour appointment we had to assess this dog’s behaviour, he rarely stopped moving and was often just racing around the training hall at full speed.

“What is wrong with him?” I was asked. “Nothing” I replied after taking a full history. And indeed this was a very normal, untrained, barely socialized, under exercised and under stimulated high drive Ferrari of a dog! This family would have been very happy with a tractor of a Labrador. Yes, labs can come in a Ferrari version, and yes, Malinois can come in tractor versions, but the normal state of affairs for these two breeds is that Malinois are very active and driven dogs and Labs are active, but not so active that you cannot live with them and usually they are much more willing to follow along and do whatever it is that your family is into doing.

So, what do you do if you find yourself with a Ferrari of a dog when your life is all about tractors? First and foremost, recognize that the dog doesn’t have a choice about the genes he was born with. Some of us are hardwired to be out of doors and active more often than not. Some of us are hardwired to be less active and may not enjoy the outdoor life nearly as much. Some of us are wired one way and want to be something else, and this is kind of what it is like to live with a Ferrari when you are more of a tractor type. I would love to be the kind of person who enjoys going to cocktail parties in a dress and heels, and although I can pull it off, I don’t really enjoy myself.

The first thing to do is to recognize that you live with a Ferrari. Or if you are a Ferrari type of trainer, and have a tractor, recognize that too. There is no amount of motivating that is going to make your mastiff as responsive as a border collie, and there is no amount of relaxation that is going make your Doberman enjoy watching the world slide on by your window for more than a short period of time. Recognizing who your dog is, is the first step to making the most out of his innate talents.

The next step is recognizing that you may have to compromise on your dreams. My client with the Malinois was looking for a family pet. They wanted a dog who would be happy in the house, getting daily leash walks, and hanging out while the family barbequed in the back yard. They had no idea how much work went into training a dog like the one they met to do all the things he did. Once they recognized that their dog was not a tractor, they needed to step up and make some changes in order to meet his needs. Something that is important to recognize is that your dog did not ask to live in your home. Once you have chosen the dog, you cannot get upset that he is anything other than what he is.

The changes my clients had to make included teaching their dog that other dogs and people were safe. This was a fairly long job, that would have been easier if they had done so when he was young. Next they had to add a skills training session into their dog’s life every day. It didn’t take long, but it was an every day activity. Then they had to start exercising him properly and for an active herding breed, this is a pretty big task. We started out by running him on trails while dragging a long line. As he gained skills like coming when called, and making friends, we added him to our walking group and the starting going out on regular hikes with “doggy friends”.

This particular Ferrrari was really lucky. As it turned out, the teen aged daughter in the family caught the training bug, and she began to take him to regular training classes twice a week. Then she tried out an agility class with a colleague of mine. Then she went to a herding weekend. From there, she got serious! For a Ferrari type of dog, this was exactly what he needed. Although he was always somewhat suspicious of new people and other dogs, he lived a very normal life, and the family was happy with him in the end and I would say he was pretty happy with them too.

This Kangal or Anatolian Shepherd Dog is a good example of a tractor. He can and sometimes does run fast, but he was bred to pretty low key. His job is to hang out with the sheep, day and night (these are a short haired breed of meat sheep). Unlike a Ferrari type of herding dog that races around and moves the sheep, he blends in with the herd, and is only fierce and active if a predator or thief is threatening the flock. Mostly, he just hangs out, and that makes him a really poor choice for sports that require a dog to follow your directions quickly.

I think that it can be harder for a tractor caught in a Ferrari world. I rarely see this kind of client in my behaviour practice and when I have spoke to these clients about their experiences most often, they tell me that they feel silly that they cannot motivate their dogs to do the things they enjoy. Sometimes they tell me that when their tractor turned two, they went out in search of a Ferrari to keep them busy in the training world while their tractor was content to snooze his life away on the back porch. Many tractor type dogs love a great walk, and they can for a very short period of time look exactly like a Ferrari, but for the very most part, they live and breath to rest. What breeds might typically be thought of as tractors? Many of the short faced breeds like the English Bulldog, the Pug and the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. A lot of the mastiffs, and the livestock guardians are too. Yes, they can have short periods of time where they run and race, but they aren’t tuned in to go off like a firecracker and stay focused and dedicated to a job over time. Those dogs are often the herding dogs, some of the retrievers, many of the pointers and some of the working breeds.

The take away is to know what you are looking for in a dog, and whatever dog comes into your life, to recognize what sort of personality he is, and meet his needs, whatever they might be.

Once upon a time, D’fer was a puppy. He was a very happy go lucky, plucky, out of the box kind of puppy. And he is a Chesapeake Bay Retriever. D’fer’s breeder told me that she felt that chessies are more playful than many other retrievers and in the absence of legal “stuff to do” they will make up their own games. This has proven true over Deef’s whole life.

D’fer was a very plucky puppy!

At about nine months, my beloved dog came with me on a walk with about a dozen of my clients. I had just started to do some serious retrieves with him, and he was working hard on “bring to hand”. We had been working mostly with retrieving bumpers, those black and white plastic things that float, but I had given him a duck to fetch and he was doing really, really well with it. I was a very happy dog trainer on that fateful spring day.

I remember the weather well, and how I was dressed. I was wearing my spring windbreaker, along with a pair of leather gloves. It was a very lucky thing that I had gloves on because D’fer chose that day to try something brand spanking new related to retrieving. He brought me a dead skunk, at the state of decomposition where it is still recognizably a skunk, but it was past bloated and gross. Partially dehydrated, and in one piece, Deef recognized this as “a valuable item to bring to your person”. Which he did. The $5000 question is…”What do you do when your dog brings you a dead skunk?”

If you are wearing gloves, you take it, and then cue your dog to your left side and you throw it and send him for the skunk again. My students were to say the least, gobsmacked. This was NOT what they had thought I would do! I am not sure what they were expecting, but throwing the skunk was not on the list of things they had in mind. D’fer on the other hand was VERY impressed. Great game. We played fetch about six times, and then I put the skunk and my gloves in a thorn tree and carried on my walk.

There are layers of lessons in this particular five thousand dollar question. The first layer is “if you want your dog to be a working duck retriever, when he brings you dead stuff, find a way to make it worth his while.” I didn’t want D’fer to decide that next time, he should hide his find and maybe roll in it. Yes, the skunk smelt bad and yes, so did D’fer, but frankly I was going to have to bathe him anyhow, so why not capitalize on his “I brought you dead stuff” behaviour? For the cost of one pair of leather gloves, I solidified in Deef’s mind that fetching dead stuff was just exactly what I wanted.

An activity that D’fer found interesting. I didn’t need to get in with him to share his joy in the activity.

In fact the next time he brought me something dead, a ground hog, I used it as a heel while carrying exercise and had him drop it and do seek backs with it. After twenty minutes or so of THAT game, we heeled out to the deadstock pit that we kept for chickens, and I had him drop it in and then do a sit stay while we buried the groundhog. After the ground hog burial, I got out a Frisbee and threw it in the swamp for him for another ten minutes.

The next layer to learn is that retrieving and in fact most of the things I teach my dogs to do are not behaviours in isolation. They are behaviours that are part of activities that we do jointly that have meaning for both of us. D’fer is my service dog. Airports, grocery stores, doctor’s offices, and city buses are not in general fun for the dog. In fact, there is a whole lot of boring involved with the work that Deef does as a service dog, and there is not a whole lot of inherent reinforcement for doing what I need him to do. Hours and hours and hours of heeling just isn’t fun and heeling makes up the lion’s share of what D’fer does as a service dog. In order to make this something that he is willing to do, that he offers on a regular basis even when he doesn’t have to,

I think of the work we do together as needing meaning to both of us. Deef has activities that he loves to do, and I integrate them into my day on a regular basis. Deef loves meeting people he knows. When we meet, I always make sure he gets a chance to say hi. As a result, D’fer recognizes airports we land at, and he knows exactly who he is looking for. When we land in New York he is looking for Cissy and Woody. When we land in Cleveland, he is looking for Linda and Brent. When we land at home in Toronto, he is looking for John. The day we landed in New York and were picked up by Dennis, he was pleased to see his friend Dennis, but he was disgusted that Cissy and Woody were not there and he didn’t straighten up until we got to their house. He travels to New York to visit Cissy and Woody, not Dennis, even though he really likes Dennis.

Making my work meaningful to my service dog has shifted my perspective on training a lot. I recognize that D’fer’s motive for doing what we do is different than mine, but he isn’t just doing it because I reinforced him for doing it. It has meaning in and of itself for him. Like fetching the skunk, my motive was to get a reliable retrieve of anything, anytime and anywhere. Deef’s motive was to play a game he likes. Distilling this down to I reinforce behaviours I like is valuable in terms of understanding the training cycle and the process of developing behaviours, but it is simplistic in its evaluation of the overall life that D’fer and I share. Recognizing that my dog has a different motivation than I do allows me to look for things that he might be interested in and sharing those activities with him.

This is an activity that both D’fer and I enjoy! Looking for activities that are meaningful to both you and your dog is really important!

Having a relationship with a dog can be impersonal, like the kind of relationship you have with the guy who pumps your gas, or it can be deeply meaningful like the kind of relationship that you have with your spouse or it can be anything in between. When all of your interactions are transactions the way that you have financial connection with the guy who pumps your gas, then you are missing the possibilities and potential for so much more. When you recognize that your dog may have different motivations than you do and may have something of value to share with you, you deepen the meaning of your relationship with your dog, and you gain so much more.

Sharing in your dog’s interests, freely and with an open heart means accepting and understand something about the core of dogginess. It means accepting that a skunk may be a great prize even if you don’t like it yourself. It means that some of the time, you may have a dog who smells bad or who has done things that you find disgusting. But it also means that when your dog shares things with you, you have a chance to expand your experiences, and often in a very good way.

There was the time for instance when I was staying at a friend’s house with D’fer. I was packing to leave the next morning and Deef was at loose ends. We have done recreational SAR with D’fer and it is perhaps the game he loves best. At home, if I am working around the yard and he is loose, he will often come with a stick or a toy and sit beside me and “ask” me to throw it. If I am able I often do. If I am not able to do that, then I will just tell him not now, maybe later. In the yard, when he is told not now, he will often go and carefully place the item some distance away from me. Then he will come back and get back into heel position; the position that he starts in during SAR. One day when he did this, I cued him to search, and search he did. He had placed the item, but he likes games, and I observed him racing all over the farm. He looked in the woodpile and he looked around the flower beds and he looked in the trash pile and he looked in the horse paddocks. He checked both under and on top of the lawn chairs and the bar-b-que. And then he finally after about five minutes went to where he had put the item and “found”.

The night I was packing to leave, D’fer came and brought me a toy and I told him that I couldn’t play then, but may be later. He took his toy and disappeared into the hallway. A moment later, he came back and sat in heel position. I cued him to search. He looked in my eyes with complete disgust. He really was appalled. He went to his bed and lay down and sighed. A minute later, he came back and asked again. Not taking the hint the first time, I sent him to search again. He made a leap forward like he normally does on a search and then sat back down and looked at me. Curious, I stepped forward and looked out of my room. The toy was on the floor. I went to the toy, and picked it up and Deef joined me doing a chessie joy dance. Then he took the toy and shook it and bounded up and down the hall for a moment. I went back to my packing.

A few minutes later, he came back without the toy and sat again beside me and made eye contact. This time, I thought I knew the game, so I went out my door and looked in the hallway. No toy. I looked in the adjacent bedroom. No toy. I looked in the bathroom; there it was. This time, Deef didn’t join me in my find. He sat in the hall and watched me search. He did what I normally do on a search. I watch what he does. When I found the toy I made a big deal out of it and brought it to him and THEN he did the chessie happy dance.

The third time he hid the toy, he hid it in the adjacent bedroom and he tightened up his criteria for what he wanted me to do. The third time I found the toy and he looked disappointed. By tuning in to him, and sharing in his game I got more out of the whole experience. I learned that he wanted me to do something more, but I wasn’t sure what it was. I put down the toy and he sat. We stayed that way for perhaps a minute and then Deef did something I find quite remarkable. He showed me what he wanted. He sniffed the book shelf. He looked under the bed. He looked under the night table. He sniffed the dresser. And then he looked at the toy and sat back down. So I followed suit. I looked carefully at the bookshelf. I looked under the bed. I opened the closet. I looked up high and I looked down low. And then I “found” the toy.

We played this game seven or eight times. Being willing to follow D’fer’s lead and play his game was an incredibly rewarding experience. Deef has offered this game from time to time since, but not often. I never would have had this opportunity if I had distilled the sum of our relationship down to behaviours I had reinforced and made stronger. If I had not always looked for the deeper meaning in the work that we did together, I would have missed this experience altogether. I would have short changed myself and I believe I would have short changed D’fer too.

Traveling by public transit is pretty borng for a service dog, but sometimes it takes you to places that are really interesting for both you and your dog!

The story of the skunk in many ways epitomizes what I try and share with my students. Yes, by all means, understand reinforcement theory and understand how learning works and teach your dog lots and lots and lots of behaviours. More than that though seek opportunities to include your dog in your life, and share with him what you do, and then be willing to let him share with you what is important to him. If you do this, if you are diligent in this, then when you ask your dog to do things that are difficult or boring, that may not have meaning to him, your dog will begin to look for the meaning in what you are doing together. Not everything that your dog wants to do is yucky or disgusting; often it is the mundane. When I was touring Wall Street, D’fer caught a scent and tracked someone on concrete for over ten blocks. By being willing to follow him, I was taken into a deli I never would have visited, I went into and immediately left a very seedy bar, and I stopped at a mailbox that would not have caught my interest. When we got to the park on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, I was treated to the sight of boats and ferries and birds and all sorts of magic that I would have failed to notice in my effort to get the most out of visiting the financial district of New York. By being willing to share what D’fer felt was important, when he asked for a swim in the ocean, he was willing to accept not now as a legitimate answer to his question and he was willing to continue on our journey together. All in all there is no greater gift than a partner who will share his skunk, and all of the Atlantic Ocean with you. My relationship with my dog is truly magic.

Recently a competing dog training school posted pictures of their graduating class to their Facebook page. The album featured six smiling families with their dogs in a sit and a graduation certificate and individual brags beside picture. On five out of the six dogs, they were obviously wearing prong collars. Interesting. Two of the six dogs showed clear signs of distress and one dog appeared to be really frightened. All the people were wearing big smiles and the instructor made a point that he was graduating six well trained dogs. Hmmm. Why do six well trained dogs all need prong collars? And why do well trained dogs look so stressed? Could it be that the people feel that their dogs are under control by virtue of the equipment that they wear?

Jumping back twenty years or so, I remember when the leash laws first came into Guelph. There was a lot of publicity about dogs being leashed on a leash that was no more than two metres in length and being under control without a lot of information about what exactly under control meant. One fine summer day, I was out in the park in a legitimate off leash area with my dog off leash. Being a dog trainer, I was doing what I am prone to doing; I was training my dog. I left him on a sit stay, and walked about 50 metres away. A woman came along with her two kids and stopped dead and then began to scream at me to get my dog under control. Fifty metres away, my dog sat panting and looking around, and this woman continued her tirade about dangerous dogs. My leash was around my shoulders as it usually is, and my dog was relaxed and I was really confused. At first I protested that my dog WAS under control. This seemed to rev the woman up even more. After several minutes of this, I called my dog and she and the children began to shriek. My dog came and I leashed up and the woman finally relaxed a tiny amount and told me that the new law required my dog to be under control. I had an aha moment. By under control, she meant ON LEASH. Under control means something entirely different to me.

This puppy is off leash, outdoors and running, but he is STILL under control. His intense focused look is just what we expect to see in a puppy learning to come when called!

When I first started to offer dog training classes I mostly had my students using the traditional chain slip collar that we now understand can cause a lot of injuries. I don’t use them any longer and don’t allow them on my training grounds. The risk of injury to my students’ dogs is just too high, and I think that they really gave us a false sense of what it meant to be under control. When control is entirely reliant on stopping bad behaviours from happening, then we aren’t actually teaching dogs to have self control; we are teaching them that if they do things we don’t want, they will get hurt. Again, I have to reflect that as a society we have a funny way of thinking about “control”. We spent most of our time teaching the dogs what they could not do and how badly we could hurt them if they stepped out of line.

In my introduction to dog training class, I had an activity that I did with one of my own dogs. I dressed him up in every piece of dog training equipment I owned. I put on a halter and a harness, a chain collar, a flat buckle collar, a martingale, a dog coat and a prong on him. I would put him through his paces and one by one take all the equipment off. I would point out to my audience that my dog was happy to work bare naked. I did a lot of work with that dog and it was wonderful exciting happy work, even though I started him on a pain based system. What I learned with that particular dog is that it is not the equipment. It is the relationship. Control doesn’t depend upon the collar, it is reliant on the relationship.

Relationship is what really creates a dog under control. At Dogs in the Park, we start all of our dogs on flat buckle collars and two metre leashes, and we do the first few classes with the dogs tethered to the wall. We recognize that we are not starting with dogs who have self control or even owner directed control. We work towards getting the dogs off the wall as quickly as we can. We want the dogs to be successful and the people to be successful too, so we take out the variable in the equation of the dog making the wrong choice. We tether and work on SELF control.

I am much more concerned about this on leash dog than I would be about the off leash puppy above. Everything about this dog tells me that he doesn’t want to be with the person on the end of the leash and that he is pretty intent on getting to where he wants to go. Being in control has nothing to do with the equipment the dog is wearing and everything to do with the amount of education that dog has, the relationship he has to the person he is working with and the situation that the people have put him into.

My dog out in the park was demonstrating self control. He was controlling his impulse to go and run up and say hi to the kids. He was controlling his impulse to go to the river to swim. He was controlling his impulse to lie down. My dog was in control of himself and he was doing what I wanted him to do; he was minding his manners and staying where I had left him. This is the level of self control that is easy to live with. I didn’t have to worry about this dog pulling people over; he wouldn’t dream of pulling on leash. I didn’t have to worry about him leaving either; he knew that staying was the game at the moment. In training, that is the goal. A well trained dog is a dog who is happy and confident and who will mind his manners, even if he is bare naked.

Getting from the point of being tethered to the wall and learning to not take treats and to not knock people over when they come in to greet to being able to be left on a sit stay or a down stay at fifty metres does not need to be painful for the dog, but it is an important step in developing self control. It should in fact be fun for everyone. At home, you should be doing most of your training off leash. The leash is a great tool but it is only a tool and it is not about great training. It is what we use when we must, not what actually teaches the dog to do something. What actually teaches the dog to do things is not the equipment he wears or the words that you say, but the direct outcomes of his own behaviour.

The key to getting from point A, the dog who is out of control to point B the dog who will do distance stays while his person is being screamed at is a process of steps. Seeing the pictures of the graduating class of the other school reminded me of how important steps and stages are. At the very beginning, I have to acknowledge that the dog does not understand what I want. If pain is the tool we choose to explain this to the dog, then we need to be able to set the dog up to learn quickly and efficiently that there is a way to avoid pain. The pain should be minimal and rare and the dog should understand how to not get hurt. In the old days when I was first learning to train we would do set ups where we would set the dog up to fail so that he could learn that he would be hurt if he made the wrong choice. I realize now, especially when I look at pictures and video from those days that my dog was often concerned about being right and worried that she would get hurt. The picture of the graduation class brought home some pretty strong memories for me, some of which I am not entirely proud of.

Now when I look at the journey from point A to point B, I ask myself if the dog is relaxed and happy. If the dog is relaxed, then I know that he understands what I want him to do. I look not only at if the dog can do the skill, but also if the dog is comfortable about it. If the dog is not comfortable I reassess what I am asking him to do. When we start a dog in training at Dogs in the Park, they start on the wall and we ask the question; “are you comfortable enough to take treats?” If the answer is yes, then we ask “are you comfortable enough to click and treat?” If the answer to that is yes, then we ask “are you comfortable enough to refrain from taking treats when you should not?” and if the answer is yes, we ask the question “are you comfortable enough to offer behaviours?” If we get a no, then we work with the client to determine what we need to do to make the dog feel safe and comfortable enough to work in our classroom. We ask the dog.

Training is not just about skills acquisition. It is also about the emotional state of the dog, and the relationship that the dog has with you. When a dog feels confident about you and the work you are doing, he is eager and keen to try new things. He doesn’t look worried or concerned. He doesn’t look like something might go wrong at any moment. When a dog feels confident about what he is doing he is willing to engage in things with you, and that is what partnership is about. It is not just about skills acquisition at all; it is about everything that the dog is thinking about and experiencing including how the dog is working with you.

So I come full circle back to the graduation pictures that my competitor posted. The people look thrilled and proud. Half the dogs look relaxed. The instructor describes his clients and their dogs as well trained dogs and people. But three of the six dogs look unhappy and at least five of the six dogs are wearing devices that operate on pain. None of the dogs is looking at his person as though that person was interesting or cool. This is where we started at Dogs in the Park. I am really glad we moved on to where we are now. The pictures I post of my clients don’t show a whole lot of graduations. We don’t graduate dogs anymore. We celebrate when they achieve levels. And we see a lot more happy and a lot fewer stressed dogs. I am really proud of what we are doing here, and I hope my students are just as proud of themselves; our dogs learn skills and they also learn about partnership and relationship and trust. And when you dog trusts that you have his back, he will do nearly anything for you. One step at a time, towards a goal that is meaningful for both of you. I am so glad my competition posted their pictures. Sometimes I just need some confirmation that I am heading in the right direction.

Every year at this time, I start preparing my clients for the holiday season, and every year, I come up against the same thing; families want to include their dogs, but they often have very unrealistic ideas about what their dogs should be doing with their families. People want their dogs to be part of gift opening activities, however, they don’t want the dogs to take every gift from under the tree and tear it apart. People want their dogs to be around during the holiday feast, but they don’t want him to beg at the table. And families like to include dogs in greeting the guests at the front door. The problem is that everyone has this idea that it is somehow or another going to all work out, without ever preparing their dog for the big day. Incidentally, I see this in families who want to include their dogs in their weddings, funerals (yes, I had a client who wanted her dog to go to her late husband’s funeral, and called up to ask my advice on how to best include him!), birthdays and other family events.

I like to include my dogs in most of my activities too, and so people are often surprised that they may come to visit me and never see my dogs. I am actually more likely to bring a dog to visit you than you are to see one of my dogs when you come to visit me. I feel like saying that the reason for this is that I am a control freak, and that would not be untrue but there is a lot more to it than that. It starts from the point that I really want my dogs to be successful. I really, really want them to be successful. Yes, they goof, but the vast majority of time, after people have met my dogs they say things like “wow, I wish my dogs behaved as well as that!”

Including your dog when visiting is an art that includes actually training the dog. This dog has been taught to sit and stay in a relaxed way with his family, showing that the family has prepared the dog for a group portrait.

The way that my dogs get such a stellar reputation is simply that I train them to do what I want them to do and then I plan interactions to compliment what they know. All my dogs know how to do a one hour down stay by the time they are 6 months, so if I have to take them somewhere, I can depend on them to lie down and stay for at least an hour. This means that I can start taking them quiet places to visit for up to an hour at a time so long as their other needs for food, water, exercise and social contact have been met. This can be a lot of fun. I can go out with a friend for coffee somewhere, or I can go to someone’s home, or they can come to visit me. In this way I teach my young dogs that there is an expectation about the down stay no matter where it happens. The thing about this is that I don’t take my pups out with people who are going to upset my training plans. I only take them places where I know they will be supported and successful in what I want them to learn. If you are the type of guest who is going to tease my dog out of her down stay and into play, then she can rest in her crate while I am visiting with you. If you have kids who might be too quick or too much fun for a puppy to resist joining in the fun with, then she can rest in her crate, where she won’t learn bad habits right off the bat.

With my older dogs, who know the drill, I will have them out while you visit, if I am confident that you are the kind of guest who knows how to mind their manners around my dogs. I expect that my dogs are going to mind their manners around my guests, but by extension, I expect that my guests will mind their manners around my dogs. When I am visiting with you, you are the person I am interested in, so I want to be able to spend my time focusing on you! I don’t need to spend all my time pleading with my guests so that they are not getting my dogs unnecessarily excited, and I don’t want to spend my time with you chastising my dogs if they goof and forget their manners. So unless and until I am very certain that my dogs cannot be tempted out of their down stays, it is most likely that they won’t be coming out of their crates or the yard if you are at my house for a short visit.

If you are visiting for more than an hour or so, I usually make some time for an activity that everyone is going to enjoy with my dogs. If I have a new adult dog in my home, who doesn’t know the rules and doesn’t have the training to participate, you still won’t meet that dog. It isn’t fair to the dog to be asked to behave himself when he doesn’t understand the rules. If people are up for it, we can go for an off leash walk around the farm at a time that works out for the rest of our day. If people don’t want to go for a walk, we sometimes go out for a game of fetch, one dog at a time. In the event that people don’t want to go outside, then I will bring the dogs out one at a time, to do some tricks and maybe play some scent games. What I do with my dogs and you will depend upon who you are, what your experiences are with my dog or dogs, and what the activity is for the day.

So how do you include your dog in the holidays while also making sure that your dog is going to be successful? As always, it depends. If I am expecting your family to my home in the mid afternoon, to stay for two nights, and participate in two formal meals, brunch, gift giving and the normal hubbub that comes along with a houseful of people who don’t normally live there, I am going to give some thought to how to set up for success. If I am going to visit you, the process is analogous, as I will outline below.

Gift giving is a large part of many traditions! If your dog does not already know how to automatically leave items that are not his, leaving him to his own devices during the holidays almost always results in a dog who gets into something he ought not. This may result in something funny, but it could also make someone who worked really hard on the perfect gift really upset, and rightly so! Managing expectations, using crates and leashes and teaching your dog what you expect of him is a better choice than allowing him to cause this sort of upset.

When I am expecting guests, I always make certain that my dogs get a really good run before you are expected to arrive. For my dogs that usually means getting them out and off leash, preferably in a group of other dogs. This is fairly easy for me; we live in the country, in a place where we have over forty trails to choose from and we know a lot of dog families so getting real exercise is not terrifically difficult for me. If I am going to go visit someone, I always look for a walking trail on the way where I can stop for at least 40 minutes to run my dog or dogs. I want to start out a guest experience, either as a host or as a guest with a dog who is not full of beans and silliness.

Once I get that out of the way, when I get home, I make sure that I have a good supply of toys pre-stuffed to give my dogs in their crates. Stuffing Kongs properly means knowing your dog very well, and understanding how they work on toys. With naïve dogs, I will just put kibble and chunks of treats such as liver, sausage or cheese loosely in the Kong. I will put the whole thing upside down in a coffee mug so things don’t fall out while stored. With more experienced dogs, I will do the same thing, but add a plug made from sausage or cheese. Locally we can get a product called Rollover (https://rolloverpetfood.com/product/beef-dog-food/ ) that works very well to plug a kong. There are many brands the world over of this type of product. With dogs who are really good at this, I will use Rollover to lock in the kibble on multiple levels; I will alternate a layer of kibble with a layer of rollover until the Kong is completely stuffed. Kongs stuffed in this way can be dropped, thrown, or bounced and they won’t spontaneously empty. For the truly serious Kong chewer, I will freeze these to make emptying them really difficult. Although I mention Kongs here, there are now a wide variety of toys available to stuff. Just make sure that you can blow through the toy so that you don’t create a vapour lock that can suck your dog’s tongue into the toy. You can find my blog on safe toys at https://mrsbehaviour.wordpress.com/2014/12/14/safe-toys/ .

Once I have a well exercised dog, and a pile of stuffed toys ready, then I am ready to entertain you. If I am travelling, I bring the toys with me. Regardless of if I am answering the door or ringing the doorbell, that initial excitement is not part of my dog’s lives because they are in crates when it happens. Usually they don’t have a Kong at this point. If I am arriving at your house, my dogs are in their crates in the vehicle, and if you are arriving at my home, my dogs are usually crated for about a half an hour before you arrive.

You may be wondering why I do it this way. When dogs are permitted to greet every single guest every single time, they never learn to do that politely. Imagine for a moment if your closest friend greeted you the way most dogs greet people at the door. Imagine how you might feel for instance if your dad or your uncle were to rush the door yelling and hooting and hollering, and then leapt up at you and tackled you to the ground. Even if the intent was benign, you would not be pleased. When my dogs are well enough trained to lie quietly and approach gently, they can greet people at the door. I use behaviours such as the one hour down stay (https://mrsbehaviour.wordpress.com/2018/01/03/the-racehorse-down-stay/ ) proofed against doors to teach my dogs what to do but I don’t allow my dogs to just greet. Usually when I am visiting for two nights, I have a pile of things to bring in and I leave my dogs in their crates in the vehicle until I am ready to bring the rest of my things in.

Often if you are visiting me, I will have coffee waiting, and we can sit down to visit a little, and this is when I like to bring my dogs out. My dogs understand that people sitting around drinking coffee means that they should find a place to settle. If I have a young or naïve dog, I will often bring him in on leash, and have treats available so that I can reward him for calm and quiet behaviour. Once you and the dogs have had a chance to meet quietly, either by you going to them to give them treats, or they coming and sitting beside you to get a treat, then they are free to go about their day. People have often commented when they stay with me about how my dog’s “excited” greeting is very low key. They are obviously pleased to meet you, however they are not whining, jumping up or knocking you over.

If I am visiting, I usually bring yellow mats for my dogs (dogs see yellow and blue, so I want something that they will recognize as their own) and they do a down stay once we are in the house. When I am visiting, my dogs are not allowed to move freely through your house without permission. They don’t know the rules of your house, and I don’t want them to be in your way. When I move from one place to another in the house, they follow me, either because they have been taught to do that, or because they are on leash.

Go lie on your mat is one of the essential behaviours that my dogs need to know to help them be successful guest dogs and host dogs. I look at my dog’s mat as his chair at the table. I can decide where he needs to lie, and make sure that everyone knows not to disturb him there. This includes your dog in your activities without creating the kind of chaos that can occur when he doesn’t know where he should be or what he should do.

There is an exception to these rules for my dogs. If you know my dogs really well, and you know how I want you to interact with my dogs, then I may allow them to meet you at the door. Friday has a young friend who visits a few times a year, and when she comes to visit, Friday will circle her and smile, and she will bend over and tickle Friday all over. They are delightful to watch because their behaviour is highly reciprocal. I contrast this with most greetings is a dog who is so excited and who has no idea about what is expected, and a human who spends most of her effort fighting off the affections of the dog. This is not a healthy greeting, and it doesn’t reflect what I expect of my dogs or of my guests.

Once the guest/host greeting phase is over, my dogs are usually fairly settled and behave towards my guests as they would towards John and me; they are happy and relaxed, but they don’t spend all their time overwhelming people with their exuberance. If at any time they are struggling with what I believe is appropriate and healthy interactions, I will take them back to their crates, give them a stuffed toy to keep them amused, and then go back to visiting.

At meals, my dogs will either be in their crates with their dinners, or lying quietly behind my chair. I don’t want my dogs to learn to bother people who are eating, and I don’t want either my host or my guest to teach my dog bad manners by rewarding behaviours that I don’t like, so most often my dogs are crated through dinner. Given that holiday feasts are often accompanied by candles and multiple courses that have to be served and cleared away, this makes things easier for everyone. My dogs love their crates, so this is easy for us. I feed all meals at home in crates so that I can see who is eating, and who is not, and so that I can ensure that with multiple dogs, no one eats anyone else’s food.

Often holiday visits include gifts exchanges. If I have a dog who is really savvy about guests, I will have them do a down stay as part of the activity, however if they are not, then they spend that time in their crates. It is a short period of time in my dog’s life, but it can make such a difference in the memories that are created at the holidays. Consider for instance if someone has spent a lot of time and effort planning a special gift for another person and the dog completely overshadows the experience. You want the gift giver and recipient to remember the exchange, not how the dog jumped into the picture and stole the show, or worse how the dog destroyed the gift itself because he didn’t know how to keep his paws to himself.

In between meals and gifts, I still need to meet my dog’s needs for food, training and exercise. Often this is an opportunity to include family members in activities where they can more actively interact with my dogs. When this is not possible, I may do a few tricks here and there. This serves to give the dog a role in the gathering, and also to give people who may not know my dogs to interact with them in a way that I can control. It is a win/win when the dog has a role and is appreciated for himself.

Tricks can be a great way to include your dog in the holiday activities, and part of the fun is that you can break almost all the rules! Normally I would not encourage a dog to put his feet on the dinner table but in this case, being at the height of the high five recipient means that the old man doesn’t need to bend down to participate! Setting clear rules for your dog when teaching the trick makes this a safe and fun activity.

All of this requires planning and training, and certainly it is not how everyone experiences holidays with their dogs. I wrote this blog after a Facebook exchange with a colleague who was lamenting her experiences visiting with her dog. A number of trainers chimed in with their horror stories of visiting with dogs, and I mentioned that when I had guests, often my dogs would stay in their crates. We were all surprised to find out how many of us crated our dogs when guests arrived, and how few of our non-professional trainer friends did not. I often see posts on social media saying things like “the dog lives here, you don’t” along with a laundry list of poor behaviours that I should expect when visiting that person’s home. When I visit, I am not coming to be drooled on, sat, on, pestered, or hassled into play. Yes, my dogs live here. No, I don’t expect them to make visiting me a chore.

In my last blog about walking puppies off leash (https://mrsbehaviour.com/2015/06/26/off-leash/ )I had a few comments on the Dogs in the Park Facebook page about how this made owners of reactive dogs cringe. One respondent said that my last blog was too nuanced for beginner trainers, and could lead to people letting their dogs off leash in places where they might encounter her large strong dog reactive dog. Let me just excerpt a couple of sentences from that blog to make certain that if you are reading about going off leash with your puppy you are clear about my intent

First:

“The pinnacle of my relationship with my dogs is being able to take them off leash and walk with them anytime, anywhere. Being ABLE to do so is different from choosing to do so when it would not be in their best interest, but being able to do so is magic.”

In case people are not clear, being able to take my dogs off leash implies that I will take more into account than just removing the leash. Choosing to do so when it is dangerous is not my intent. There are a number of issues related to taking a puppy off leash, and the first of those issues is choosing to do so only when it is in your pup’s best interest.

Second:

“The more new places I can go, the better in my opinion, but I have to keep a bunch of things in mind. I don’t want to run into other dogs, especially dogs I don’t know. That could expose my puppy to diseases I don’t want him to catch, or to behaviours I don’t want him to experience. I also don’t want to run into the stools of unknown dogs because I want to protect my young pup from worms.”

Again, if you are unclear, I want you to steer clear of the dogs who might be reactive or who might carry diseases or who might be upset by your off leash puppy. If I don’t know your dog, I don’t let my youngster off leash. I am not as worried about what my pup might do to your dog in this case, but I am worried about what your dog might teach my puppy. If you have a reactive dog, I don’t want my puppy to learn anything from him, and so it is the responsibility of the dog owner to act in their dog’s best interest, which means not bringing my pup into a place where your dog might get upset and my pup might be frightened.

Third:

“I don’t want to run into predators either. Hawks and owls can easily take a young small puppy. Coyotes, wolves and bears are also a concern in some parts of Canada. Even foxes can be a problem and will take a small dog if they stumble across it. Water can be another natural hazard to be aware of. About four years ago in Guelph, a young pup was playing on the ice and fell in and drowned. Fast water, deep water, ice and hidden water are all things I keep in mind when I am taking my puppies out for their first excursions into the natural world.”

This advice could also include roads, cars, bikes, and anything else in the environment that could cause harm to my puppy. In the last blog I was very specific about the owner’s responsibility to keep their dog safe. Now I want to address that same issue with reactive dogs in mind.

When you live with a reactive dog, you have a huge responsibility to keep your dog below threshold. By keeping your dog below threshold, you are taking active steps to avoid situations where your dog is not going to go off and become reactive. If your dog is reactive to children, then please, don’t go to the local school yard or playground in the name of training your dog. This is neither fair to your dog or to the children you are exposing him to.

Allowing your dog to get triggered is not only unfair and unsafe to the public at large it is very unfair to your dog. As the owner of a reactive dog it is your job to prevent this from happening by choosing your walk locations both on and off leash carefully. The more often that your dog is triggered, the more he is going to behave this way. Image credit: fouroaks / 123RF Stock Photo

If your dog is reactive to other dogs, then taking him through a park where other dogs run is irresponsible, even if it is against the law for those dogs to be running there. If this sounds like I am condoning dog owners breaking the law let me assure you I am not. I would really like everyone to follow their local leash laws, but the fact is that people ARE letting their dogs run illegally and if you walk your reactive dog into that situation, then he is going to react. You are your dog’s advocate and he doesn’t know what the risks are when choosing your walking route.

In my opinion, off leash activities in natural areas are important not only for dogs but also for children. The child who has never set foot in a natural area is much poorer for the lack. As a former outdoor educator, I am keenly tuned in to what happens when we isolate ourselves from nature, and the results of children being isolated from nature are huge. This is also true for dogs. So what do you do when you have a reactive dog who is unable to get out to walk off leash in the natural world?

The first thing is to get out a map, or open up Google Earth and take a close look at your neighbourhood. What is the closest green area on the map? In many suburban environments, you will now find causeways between housing developments that allow water to run off naturally. These green spaces are often un-used and available to bring your reactive dog to for exercise and stimulation. The areas under hydro allowances are also often available. Then there areas of crown or state land that are open to the public but little used. When you look at Google Earth, you will find green in very unexpected places. One of the most common places that I find green in urban areas is abutting industrial basins.

Once you have looked at the map, go visit without your dog. Really. This is the important preplanning that you must do to avoid the puppies I am sending out to do normal off leash walking. When you go, spend time looking for evidence of other humans in the area. Yes, there are stray dogs and that is a risk, but you can often find areas in very urban settings where there is green space available to walk along, where few people go. You are looking for things like fresh litter (the semi decayed and crushed water bottle that is half covered in mud is not recent; the whole shiny chip bag that has been stepped upon is), footprints, bike tire prints, pawprints, and crushed vegetation. If you are finding a lot of fresh evidence mark that location as a possible, but not likely place. If you actually meet people there, then cross that location off the map. Visit several places, and if you find one where there is no evidence of people, you have scored a walking area. If you have found some places with some evidence of people walking there, visit a few times and see if you can determine when you can avoid people.

This is an excellent site for working with a reactive dog. I can see if there are other people or dogs in the distance and take steps to avoid problems while allowing my dog the opportunity to walk in a very normal way. If I am concerned about my dog biting, I will muzzle him even if I don’t expect to meet anyone. Muzzling is more preplanning you can do to help your dog have a successful off leash experience. Preplanning is all about making sure that if it could go wrong, it doesn’t. I teach all dogs including non reactive dogs to wear a muzzle. In this case, Eco was wearing a muzzle because he was on our reactive dog walk where all the dogs wear muzzles as a safety precaution. I also teach a rock solid down at a distance so that I can put the brakes on if I need to do so. Photo Credit: Sue Alexander

This link leads to the map of where I hold my reactive dog walks. http://tinyurl.com/jvpuy8e . Over the four years I have been walking there with dogs with behaviour problems I have never met a person or dog there, and yet it is right in a neighbourhood full of hundreds of people who could walk there if they wanted to do so. If you look at the “A” marked on the map, that is where Dogs in the Park is, so this is a short three minute walk from the training hall. I visited this location every Sunday for three weeks before moving my walk there; I wanted to be certain that I would not run into people with my crew of reactive dogs. Preplanning pays off.

Not only must you preplan where you are going to take your dog, but you must preplan what you are going to do. If you are the owner of a reactive dog, you have a responsibility to always attend to that dogs’ behaviour. If you are not able to attend to him at all times, then you may not be able to work with your dog off leash. While walking your reactive dog off leash, you need to be aware that on public property, anyone could show up at any time and you need to be aware of what is happening around you and be ready to call your dog back to you and leave if it is no longer in your dog’s best interest to have him off leash. Keep in mind this isn’t about your right to do this activity; this is all about your responsibility to YOUR dog. Being responsible to YOUR dog keeps my dog safe. This is not an activity to do with your kids, or when you have a head ache; this is an activity to do when you can give your whole attention to what you are doing.

This is our off leash reactive dog walk called the Good Dog Walk. All of the dogs have behaviour problems of one sort or another. Everyone is paying attention to the dogs in order to assure that we can prevent any problems from happening. If you are unable to attend to your dog, then don’t take him out! Photo Credit: Sue Alexander

If the area is not fenced and you think your dog might bolt, then dragging a long line is a great idea. 30 metres of long line dragging will allow you to catch your dog at any time, but allow the line to drag. Don’t try and hold onto it. Use a piece of bright tape to make off 10, 20 and 25 metres, so that you can see when your dog is getting far enough away that you should take action. Call first and if he does not come, step on the line. I like to call dogs when they are at about twenty metres and stop them by stepping on the line at 25 metres if they haven’t come. This teaches the dog not to stray, but doesn’t interfere with his normal and natural behaviour.

Long lines are great tools to help your dog to stay close to you while he is learning to work off leash. Notice that this dog is calm and under control? This is the behaviour you want before letting your dog go and explore. If your dog is straining at the leash and staring at things, then wait till he is calm and relaxed before starting out. Photo Credit: Sue Alexander

Just what do I want the dog to do? Pretty much whatever he wants. If he wants to sniff around, let him. If he wants to lie in a puddle, allow that too. This may be the first time that your reactive dog can just choose to do what makes him happy. Most of the time when we are working with reactive dogs we are micromanaging what they are doing to avoid them going over threshold. You see another dog in the distance? You ask the reactive dog to look at you and not engage in the other dog, and then ask him to sit or lie down. Every action that your dog does may have been micromanaged, possibly for years. This level of micromanagement may keep your dog from going over threshold, but it sure doesn’t help him to be relaxed and confident and that is part of what being off leash gives us.

Although you want to have control over the situation, off leash walks should be an opportunity for your reactive dog to do things he wants to do; picking things up, sniffing and looking where he wants to look are all things that he cannot do when you are micromanaging a walk on a leash. Micromanagement makes reactivity worse, not better. If your reactive dog has dog friends, taking them for walks together is even better because your dog will learn through social facilitation what is safe and what is dangerous. Photo Credit: Sue Alexander

The other thing that you must do is move. Your dog should get ahead of you, engage in the environment and then lag behind. You should encourage checking in, but you should also be checking what interests your dog. There is a huge difference between the conversation that you have when you have a reactive dog and you are orchestrating every little motion, and the conversation you have when you go over to look at the raccoon fur that is snagged on a branch that your dog has found. Developing a two way conversation with your reactive dog can go a long way to helping him to relax and enjoy himself. In my opinion, this is an essential step in success with a reactive dog.

In truly urban environments it can be very difficult to find a truly natural safe environment to explore with your dog. I have had good success with these dogs in taking them to places like blind alleys and allowing them to explore the local dumpster on a long line. The opportunity to be in a place where they are not going to be startled and be able to just smell things and explore things and toilet when they want to do so is essential to good mental health for all of us, and when we cannot get to a rural place, sometimes we have to compromise. Always we have to keep in mind our responsibility to keep our reactive dogs below threshold, not only because of the risk to others, but because every time that a reactive dog goes off, it is a penny in the bank account of anxiety and frustration, which only leads to more reactivity.

As a final word, I would like to mention that walking your reactive dog down the street on leash, through the triggers that will set him off is at best a fool’s errand that will never result in the relaxed companion you are aiming for. So where do you walk? If you have a vehicle, my best place for leash walking is a grocery store parking lot. You will see few other dogs, it is a large area where you can see people approaching and there are loads of places you can duck into in order to avoid triggers. Walking your reactive dog should be an exercise in developing confidence and relaxation for both you and your dog, and if you are constantly hyper vigilant to the things that might set your dog off, you are never going to teach him to accept his triggers; at best you are going to teach him to trust that you are his best early warning system. At worst you are going to teach him that hyper vigilance is the normal state of being.

Handsome is as handsome does, and if you are going to keep your dogs intact, you have a responsibility to train and contain them so that they cannot breed indiscriminately.

Intact dogs and bitches have become a hot topic around Dogs in the Park lately. An awful lot of the young ladies seem to have come into season all at once this past summer, and we are getting a whole lot of questions! A few weeks ago, one of our regulars came into class and I could see that she was most likely in heat. I pointed this out to the human learner, and she looked disappointed, and said “we are so close to Level 3. I guess we will have to pass it when we get back.” “Back from where?” I asked. The human thought that we would not want her young bitch in class because she was in heat! Nothing could be further from the truth. As most of our “new to living with an intact dog” students do, this family had a lot of questions, and this has prompted me to write about living with, training and coping with an intact animal.

Let’s start with the boys, because in many ways, the boys are a more straightforward situation. The correct term for a male dog is a dog, just like the correct term for an intact female dog is bitch. If you read dog in this blog you know we are talking about a male dog and if you read bitch, we are talking about a female dog. If a dog is neutered, altered or “fixed”, that means that a veterinarian has surgically removed the testicles. Even in a late neuter, they don’t remove the scrotum; they just remove the testicles. If he is intact, that means that the dog still has his testicles.

A very few male dogs have had vasectomies. Usually there is a reason for the owner of the dog to choose to have a vasectomy. I had a dog that we chose to have this done for. He was a huge military lines German Shepherd dog named Eco, and he had one testicle retained inside his body. This happens from time to time, but due to the work we wanted him to do, we wanted to make sure that he would be as physically strong as possible, and to develop as normal a skeleton as he could, so we didn’t want to neuter him. Also, we had read that intact male dogs have a better sense of smell (the jury is out on this fact; we are not sure if this is true or not, but there is enough evidence pointing to this that we decided we wanted to keep the remaining testicle). Due to the fact that Eco had retained one testicle and we knew that is a strongly heritable trait, we didn’t want him to be bred, so we opted to ask our veterinarian to do a vasectomy. For us this was a very good choice, but it did mean that although he could not sire puppies, he behaved in every other way as an intact male would.

Intact males are able to breed, and they will be much more interested in the girls when they are in heat than are neutered males, but in general, living with a well trained intact male is no different than living with a well trained neutered male. Notice that I have qualified this with well trained. D’fer was my Chesapeake Bay Retriever, and he was trained to do work as my service dog. He was also intact. As is true with almost all Chessies, he was an intense, passionate guy, with an opinion on nearly everything. We were well matched in that regard! I have about 5 foundation behaviours that I feel are essential to success for dogs who live with me. The first of these is the cued take it. As I like to say, the dog controls the dog! You can read more about my thoughts on this at https://mrsbehaviour.com/2015/11/12/the-dog-controls-the-dog/ . Other behaviours include the one hour down stay and automatically sitting at the door. The cued take it is important for intact dogs because that is what they must do when they meet a reproductively available member of the opposite sex, and that was the behaviour that mattered the most the very first time that D’fer met a female dog in heat.

I remember that we were at a tracking seminar, and another participant had brought a dog with her that she intended to have bred by a dog she was going to meet on her way home. This is not an unusual situation in the professional dog world; when we have a promising bitch, we may take her to meet a complimentary dog when she is in heat. She was behind a gate in the owner’s trailer, and as we walked by, D’fer suddenly stopped as though he had walked into a brick wall. He could obviously smell that she was in heat, and he was VERY interested! Because we had done the foundation work necessary to create the level of cued take it that I want, he did not pull or strain towards her; he stepped back and waited politely, until I told him not this time and we moved on. The owner of the bitch in heat was much relieved, as she really did not need a litter of Basset Hound Chesapeake Bay Retriever puppies!

When D’fer, my service dog met a basset hound in heat, he asked very nicely if I would let him meet her. This is an essential skill if you are going to keep your dogs intact.

There is a myth out there that if you have an intact male, he is going to be absolutely uncontrollable when he meets a female dog in heat. While this may be true in the case of an untrained dog who has been encouraged to misbehave and grab whatever he wants, this is completely untrue for a well trained dog. I feel that if you have an intact male, you have a responsibility to your dog and to the rest of society to make sure that your boy is well mannered and well trained so that he does not wander or impregnate dogs he should not. This means investing time in the first 8 to 10 months teaching your dog that grabbing whatever he wants is not acceptable, and that he must come when called regardless of what is going on around him.

Another common myth about intact males is that they are all aggressive, and that they will fight any other male dog that they meet. This just isn’t true! Intermale aggression may happen, but it is far from the universal phenomenon that people often assume that it is. I remember more than once having people explain to me that of course service dogs could not be intact because they would get into fights. I was always amused when I asked them to look more closely at my dog and have them discover that they had been sitting right beside an intact male! If you have ever seen a group of beach dogs in the Caribbean, or on a dump in a third world country, then you observed first hand that intact males can and DO co-exist peacefully. The deal is pretty simple. In the wild, males are not crowded into situations where they are going to argue a whole lot; and when conflict does arise, aggression is not usually the first choice in resolution. Aggression is only the best choice for an individual when that individual is fairly sure that he will win. This means that the male who is weaker, slower or less certain is most likely going to choose to retreat or otherwise acquiesce. The stronger, faster or more confident dog doesn’t feel the need to assert himself, and thus, he doesn’t pick unnecessary fights. Fights are really only a good idea when the outcome is uncertain; when both members of the conflict are pretty equally matched. This is not to say that aggression between males in the wild never happens; it means that aggression is relatively rare. So why is it that people think that intermale aggression is so common?

There are likely a number of answers to this. In the wild, we don’t prevent the little squabbles from happening and those little squabbles help the individuals to understand which dog is stronger and which dog doesn’t have a chance of winning a fight. Wild dogs have more choices to retreat too. And in the wild the intact males usually live in groups where the social structure is relatively stable with few individuals moving in or out at once. Compare this to the situation of your average pet dog! If he protests to another dog that he doesn’t like being that close, he will likely be chastised by a well meaning person. This means that the dog never gets to explain to the other dog what he does or does not like. I am not suggesting that permitting your dogs to squabble incessantly is a good idea, but they do need to be able to communicate their preferences! Next, our homes are set up to store our books, computers and clothing; they are not set up to allow dogs to retreat from one another easily. When I did home visits, one of the things I always looked at was if the dogs had a reasonable second way to retreat from conflict. Rarely did I find this already in existence! Next we often ask our dogs to accept a huge number of new dogs into their environment; we ask them to get along with every dog at the dog park, and then tolerate guest dogs to the home, not to mention all sorts of new people who have differing ideas about what acceptable behaviour might be. If you add into the mix the sexual tension of two males who are of similar strength, speed and agility and breeding females, fights will happen. Nevertheless, many intact dogs can and do learn to live peacefully together. I just would not suggest taking them out to the dog park and hoping for the best.

Squabbles can actually decrease the chance of aggression. This doesn’t mean we should encourage dogs to squabble, however, interrupting every single disagreement can actually lead to the less confident, weaker or slower dog to try taking on a dog who would win a fight.

Neutering will not usually resolve aggressive behaviours in dogs, however there are exceptions to this. If you have two intact males, and they are starting to get scrappy, neutering ONE of them may help. The key is which one? This is an it depends sort of question and you should work with a behaviour professional to decide which dog should be neutered. Neutering both dogs likely won’t solve your problem. If you have a particularly social and studly adolescent dog, he may be the target of aggression from other dogs who are intolerant of his shenanigans, and some of the time, neutering may resolve this. The only two behavioural benefits that have been concretely demonstrated have been marking and neutering, and in both cases, the studies did not control for the effect of training. In my experience of living with a handful of intact males, and having trained several dozen more, I would suggest that training can overcome many of the issues that are often attributed to being intact.

So how do you live successfully with an intact male? Here are my top six suggestions.

1. START TRAINING EARLY

I want my intact males in training to learn to toilet on cue (avoiding the marking issue entirely if you make sure they understand how to completely empty their bladders and make all walks contingent on producing urine quickly and completely), to ask politely for every thing they want (cued take its), to come when called (even in the face of heavy distractions) and to lie down and stay for up to an hour at a time when asked.

2.GET SERIOUS ABOUT SOCIALIZATION

We talk about S.E.E.ing your puppy at Dogs in the Park. This acronym stands for systematic environmental enrichment and what it means is making sure your intact male dog has seen literally hundreds of other people, dogs, animals, floors, vehicles, and experiences, and furthermore that these exposures have all been done sub threshold. This means having your dog relaxed at all times when exposing him to all these things. I find that it is easiest to do this with the help of an organized puppy class, however, this is not always possible. When it isn’t, make sure that you have a plan for how you are going to expose your pup to everything.

3.TEACH YOUR MALE DOG THAT LEARNING AND WORK HAPPENS EVEN IN THE PRESENCE OF A BITCH IN HEAT

This is where group classes that include intact bitches are invaluable. If you cannot find a class that includes bitches and even bitches in heat, get yourself into the confirmation world; half the dogs at every dog show are female and many of them will be in heat. Teach your boys that they still have to perform even if there is a particularly attractive girl around.

4.KEEP YOUR DOG WELL EXERCISED

If your male dog is under exercised he is going to have ants in his pants and be unable to exercise his best self control. Properly exercised means opportunities to run and run hard, on a daily basis for a young dog (use your judgement; pups under six months should not be forced to exercise the way that an adult dog will), as well as opportunities to engage with you in directed aerobic activities. Fetch is good, however, it can become an activity that will excite your dog and create stress. Better are activities such as agility, treibball, herding, or tracking. All these activities teach your dog to engage with you while he is excited.

5.INCORPORATE SELF CONTROL AS A DAILY ROUTINE INSTEAD OF AS A CUED BEHAVIOUR

Too often I see male dogs who think that they can have anything they want if they are just fast enough about taking it. I want my boys to think that they can have anything they want if only they ask. I have written about this extensively all through this blog; if the door opens, I want my dogs to go about their day without rushing the doors. This often surprises guests because they have to invite my dogs to go outside. My dogs also have to be invited to start dinner, to get on furniture and to get in the car. Self control is just part of polite manners in our house. On the other hand, our dogs have a huge toy basket of freebies; things they can take any time they want.

6.BE SENSIBLE ABOUT WHAT YOU ASK OF YOUR MALE DOGS

The last time I shared a hotel room with someone for a dogshow, she had an intact bitch. Her bitch was not in season, so I was not worried about my intact male. Nevertheless, he slept in a crate that night. If she had wanted to share a room and bring her intact male, I would have declined to share a room. I don’t ask my boys to accept every dog I know in our home, I don’t take my intact males to the dog park and when I have a bitch in heat in class with my intact males, I don’t ask them to work at distance off leash unless I am really certain that both I and the handler of the bitch have perfect control over our dogs. When I have intact males in my classroom, I am careful about when I ask them to work beside a bitch in heat; I certainly don’t ask them to do this when they are relatively new to training. Setting my boys up for success is a huge responsibility, and it is what I spend most of my time doing.

As a final word about keeping an intact male, if your dog impregnates an intact bitch, keep in mind that you are responsible for half the costs and work of the litter. If you are going to keep an intact male, it is your job to make sure he is well enough trained and contained to ensure that an unplanned pregnancy is unlikely.

Coming up next…the girls! Please be patient; this blog was delayed by an injury to my thumb which meant that all my typing has been of the hunt and peck variety for the past three weeks! I am still pretty slow on the keyboard, but I am doing my best!

We are very fortunate in Guelph to have an excellent resource for physical rehab for dogs! Very often we hear people asking if they can use their home treadmill to exercise their dogs, and we always tell them that it is a bad idea. Dr. Liz Pask of Gilmour Road Veterinary Services has kindly shared her thoughts in this guest blog for us, explaining about the risks of using a human treadmill to exercise your dog! Thanks Dr. Pask!

Treadmills are common tools to help us to keep fit, especially when the weather is bad and we cannot get outside to walk or run. Have you considered a treadmill for your dog? If you have a home treadmill, it probably is not safe for him!

Dog Treadmills VS. Human Treadmills – What’s the difference?

A common question is “Can I use my human treadmill for my dog?” In the majority of cases the answer is no. Here’s why:

– The human gait is shorter than the canine gait, which means the belt is usually too short for dogs. While your dog may be able to “fit” on the treadmill, they will not be able to use their bodies correctly, which can lead to injury.

– Even if you have a little dog who can fully extend on a human treadmill, human treadmills often don’t go slow enough for their little legs.

– Canine treadmills have many safety features built in with your dog in mind. Human treadmills often have gaps next to the belt, or raised caps at the end where paws and nails can be caught. Canine treadmills will have side rails to keep your pet safely on the treadmill; many human treadmills do not have side rails or they are at an inappropriate height.

– The control panel on a human treadmill is not located in an easily accessible area, making it difficult to adjust speed or stop quickly in case of an emergency.

The two brands that we recommend people explore if they are looking into a treadmill are DogTread or the dogPACER. We do not recommend the use of carpet treadmills.

This underwater treadmill is especially designed to help dogs to recover from injuries, and it has a lot of different safety features so that the dogs don’t get injured when they are using it. Even so, dogs are never left unattended in the treadmill and there is an emergency stop button to use if they get into trouble.

Whether at home or at an outside facility, dry or underwater, always make the treadmill is appropriate and safe for your dog.

For all your canine and feline conditioning and rehabilitation medicine needs, or if you have questions about the above article, feel free to contact us: